With Terminal Witticism, Even Cancer Can Be Fun

"House," a drama that begins tonight on Fox, tosses every imaginable medical show cliché into a potpourri of silliness that is almost irresistible. Viewers who are turned off by the predictably quirky cast, repellent close-ups of tonsils and far-fetched diseases can still relish the sheer derivative gall of the series.

"House" is one of the few dramas on Fox's canvas of copycat reality shows, and the network's piratical flair seems to have rubbed off even on its fiction. The show grafts the waggish irreverence of "Scrubs" to the code blue melodrama of "E.R." and, just for good measure, adds the operating room gore and explicit sex of "Nip/Tuck." (The second episode begins with a young couple having energetic sex; right afterward, the boy faints. )

And of course "House" borrows the "CSI" tic of magnifying brain cells and bone marrow to ridiculous extremes. The result is less like a Jerry Bruckheimer procedural drama than "Fantastic Voyage," a 1966 Raquel Welch movie in which a team of scientists are miniaturized and injected into a man's bloodstream.

The hero is Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), a brilliant diagnostician who is lame, addicted to Vicodin and as blunt and sarcastic as the blunt and sarcastic Dr. Perry on "Scrubs." Mr. Laurie is a funny, accomplished British actor (he played the father in "Stuart Little") but the writing does not give him much chance to fill out the persona. "You're trying to take the humanity out of medicine," a new colleague says after his first exposure to Dr. House's misanthropic bedside manner. "Humanity is overrated," Dr. House replies.

Dr. House spars with the hospital's comely but by-the-book chief administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) who, like all heads of prestigious teaching hospitals, wears plunging necklines to work. And his manners appall his dedicated team of young specialists, who pit their zeal and good will against his Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction. (One look at a patient whose skin has turned orange and Dr. House informs him his wife is having an affair; he can tell a woman is about to be fired from her job after she informs him her phlegm turned yellow.) That said, the premiere episode includes a scene where a young kindergarten teacher has convulsions in front of her pupils -- one of the best seizures shown on television in a long time. The emergency tracheotomy is disgusting and first-rate.

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The show's characters are flat and so is the writing, but there is something universally appealing about blood, guts and a rushing gurney. There is no Dr. Feelgood in "House," but the patients' symptoms provide a little consolation.

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A version of this review appears in print on November 16, 2004, on Page E00005 of the National edition with the headline: TELEVISION REVIEW; With Terminal Witticism, Even Cancer Can Be Fun. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe